Just a game
June 23, 2008
I hate to do this right on the heels of Michael Abbott’s refreshing optimism, but I’m a bit disappointed in the gaming community right now.
Two of my favorite gaming journalists, Stephen Totilo and Leigh Alexander, were quoted in a recent New York Times piece on the significance of Metal Gear Solid 4. Here’s an excerpt:
It’s been just over a week since the release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, the latest chapter in the popular video game series about a covert military agent named Solid Snake. And already, fans are exchanging rhetorical fusillades on the Internet, teasing out what the underlying political and philosophical messages of Metal Gear Solid 4 might be.
Encrypted within this discussion is a more sophisticated argument about the nascent medium of video games. Can it tell a story as satisfyingly as a work of cinema or literature?
Is the Sisyphean mission of Solid Snake — to rid the world of a robotic nuclear tank called Metal Gear — a parable about the futility of war or about its necessity? A critique of America’s domination of the global stage? A metaphor for the struggle between determinism and free will?
This is exciting stuff. It’s exactly the sort of discussion I’m trying to encourage with this blog (and that journalists like Alexander and Totilo foster with their work). I was thrilled to see such a high-level analysis in an article from a major publication, and I threw up a link on Twitter the second I came across it.
It appears that my enthusiasm was not shared, though, as Alexander was inundated with hate mail for her dismissal of Halo‘s story at the end of the piece. Today she reflected on the response on her blog, Sexy Videogameland:
I guess I just felt disappointed in the audience, when even those who stood on my side of the issue were busy on message boards flaming something else they didn’t like about the column.
I have felt this disappointment for some time, mind you, at the fact that whenever we as gamers on the internet have the opportunity to discuss anything at all of significance, we lapse into contentious flamewars.
I always feel like we end up injuring the very thing we’re defending: our right to be considered a legitimate audience for a legitimate medium, our right to be considered as mature, responsible consumers, our right to self-regulate appropriate content, an entire kitchen sink of issues that ends up all chipped and powdered porcelain on the bathroom floor.
While I’d like to believe we’re all interested in defending those things, I’m not sure that’s true.
Alexander’s feature on Kotaku today discusses why the dismissal “it’s just a game” is not a satisfactory defense of the medium. Here is a response from commenter “Mikazukinoyaiba”:
“It’s just a game” is what I use because that is how I honestly feel, all of these discussions about games as an “artform” and how it should evolve, what it needs to do, and how it can mature do not interest me and actually starts to become pretentious.
Lets stop trying to take everything so seriously and examine it under the microscope.
And here’s “SgtElias” on a different post about Stephen Totilo and N’Gai Croal’s Vs. Mode:
I like Kotaku for the news and information, but I usually turn off when discussions on morality and such in games is brought up. I play video games to have fun. I enjoy a good story and I understand that there is more there to be analyzed. It speaks to some of the opportunities in this country though that people can earn a freaking paycheck discussing it though.
Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, of course, but I can’t help feeling disappointed that there are gamers ambivalent about the evolution of the medium. I always thought it was our job to proselytize about games and the media’s job to dismiss us; I guess I had things backwards.
13 comments
i totally see where you and alexander are coming from. however, i think “Mikazukinoyaiba” and “SgtElias” have some good points. it is not wrong for them to play video games “to have fun” because “it’s just a game.” playing video games is a form of entertainment first and foremost. though they may not care specifically about the “evolution of the medium,” i’m sure they care about playing a good game, and good games usually come about through “evolution.” i’m sure the medium will mature into an “artform,” but right now i think we need to wait for some of the players to mature also.
by xiong on June 23, 2008 at 8:03 pm #
The same phenomenon is present in mature media that are generally regarded as artforms, like film and prose fiction. If you present the case that movie X is stupid, someone will probably say, “Hey, it’s just a movie. I don’t care if it’s not deep or artistic. I just want a little escapist fun on the weekend.” There’s a competing vision of the popular arts as pure entertainment, lacking in wider significance and we-like-it-that-way-thanks-very-much.
Arguably the gaming audience is more disposed to the pure entertainment view, or the culture at large is more disposed to see games as pure entertainment — but the pure entertainment view is routinely applied to every popular artistic medium (unless, like advertising, it is never touted as art).
The usual statement of the pure entertainment view conceals an ambiguity. If I say, “Hey, X is just a movie,” I purport to make a statement about X, but really I am saying some combination of two things: 1) X, the particular movie in question, is lacking in depth and so only merits superficial discussion; 2) I am not interested in a deeper understanding of movies (or at least X). Thing 1) can never be literally true, although it can be approximately true. Thing 2) is a matter of personal choice, about the way someone approaches the medium.
Translating back to games: the critical apathy that gamers routinely express (“it’s just a game”) tells us about the way those gamers are approaching the games. For better or worse, a sizeable segment (a majority?) of the gaming audience doesn’t want to critically engage with games. Arguably, then, the failures to evangelize games-as-art beyond gamers are only symptoms of the deeper problem, which is that gamers themselves don’t understand games as art. It then becomes reasonable to say we should “wait for some of the players to mature also.” Games’ art problem is not just a PR problem, it’s a problem of the core gaming audience.
by Grobstein on June 23, 2008 at 8:38 pm #
Xiong, don’t you think the “entertainment first and foremost” response can also validly be leveled at spy novels and blockbusters? Should we therefore accept the validity of an argument that Finnegan’s Wake shouldn’t be taken so seriously because it’s “just a book”?
In my experience, “It’s just a game” is used in two ways. The first is as a defense against the “murder simulator” crowd, and there it’s definitely invalid. No matter what kind of media it is, it’s something you put in your head and we need to to seriously consider the idea that putting violent murder in our heads much of the time is not a great idea, whether the context is “just a game” or not.
The second way is what we’re seeing here, which is to deny that it is possible that something more than entertainment is being done. Here, it’s sometimes valid. Some games are just games, and that’s okay. Halo is just a game. But going from the truth that SOME games are “just games” to the belief that ALL games are “just games” is “just” stupid. Lots of games are clearly angling to say more than “hadouken”, and the knowledge that some games are more than “just a game” means that we should treat seriously the possibility that ANY game is more than “just a game”.
I feel I should also point out, with respect to the originating material, that the set of gamers who have the time or interest to engage in flame wars on forums all day is not necessarily representative of the larger gaming population. Some of us have lives and/or demanding jobs, and sometimes when we come home we want to spend our free hours with a game that brings something more to the table than just a good time.
by Sparky Clarkson on June 23, 2008 at 9:39 pm #
Thanks for your comments, guys!
xiong: I agree that it’s not “wrong” to want purely entertainment out of video games, and I don’t intend to change anyone’s mind; I’m just personally disappointed that more people are not interested in probing deeper. Maybe I have a skewed view of the gaming community because I spend so much time reading people like Leigh and Stephen, but I thought there would be more interest in critical discussion. Perhaps there isn’t.
Grobstein: Very well said. I don’t think waiting for gamers to mature is enough, though; as I said back when the Resident Evil 5 trailer was making headlines, the level of discourse isn’t gonna raise itself. We need to engage in critical discussion ourselves. I didn’t think we were doing that badly, but evidently we can do better.
Sparky: I’m wary of making absolute judgements about a game’s worthiness for further study. To take one of your examples, Professor Roger Travis of the blog Living Epic has tried to link Halo to the Homeric oral tradition. (Whether he is successful is of course open for debate, but it would be a shame to preemptively dismiss his work.)
Regarding your last paragraph: In my experience, there are just as many people (perhaps more) who want to relax after a hard day’s work with something mindless and easily digested, whether it’s a television show, a video game, or a beer. I doubt the games-as-pure-entertainment crowd is exclusive to forum posters; as Grobstein says, I think it’s endemic to the gaming community as a whole.
by Dan Bruno on June 23, 2008 at 10:08 pm #
I have to disagree with you; I think we can say with relative certainty that some games really are “just” games, although we may disagree on some particular examples. I’m sure you could write a treatise on the themes of Madden ’08 or Nascar ’09 if you really wanted, but doubtless almost everyone would find it a stretch. Of course I’m willing to listen to anyone’s try at the ring, but it’s not unfair to go in with your own opinions. It would take more to convince me of Halo’s artistic (as opposed to artisanal, which I do not dispute) merit than say, Portal or Half-Life 2. Then again, my brother and I have had almost this exact argument about Katamari Damacy, so there you go.
I agree that plenty of people with actual lives just want some mindless entertainment. I think, however, that most of them would be significantly less dedicated than the forumers to the proposition that games are JUST entertainment.
by Sparky Clarkson on June 23, 2008 at 11:11 pm #
Well, to play devil’s advocate with the examples you gave, here are two pieces from Michael Abbott about sports games which I found pretty reasonable. I don’t think a game has to be social satire, have a philosophical underpinning, or otherwise rest on “big ideas” to deserve intelligent, reasoned discussion. Or, put another way, there is room for criticism of both Finnegans Wake and The Da Vinci Code, regardless of their comparative artistic merit.
by Dan Bruno on June 24, 2008 at 12:35 am #
@Sparky Clarkson
If I understand what you’re saying, you believe that not all games are “just games” but that some are, and that “Halo is just a game”. But I would argue that no game is “just a game” – so long as there is sufficient complexity to be analysed. Any ‘text’ is a product of the creator(s) and their society and values, but even without taking this into account (whether because you think its wrong or otherwise), we can still look at videogames and discuss how they work, what they may or may not be saying and simply what we think of them. A good example of what I’m talking about is Ben Abraham’s thesis on Halo 2.
@Dan Bruno
Another great post, keep ‘em coming X)
by Fashigady on June 24, 2008 at 1:51 am #
I appreciate what Roger Travis is doing with his attempts to compare and contrast games like Halo with many of the classics, but I’m a bit undecided about it, to be honest. I kinda like to think that there are certain unique qualities about games that are un-reproducible in other mediums, so I’ll do a Michael Abbott and sit on the fence with this one (just kiddin’ Michael =D).
Getting back to your dislike of the argument of “It’s just a game”, I have to say that I strongly concur with the view that it’s generally a cop out. As has been said, there really isn’t anything wrong with not wanting to interrogate a game for its deep meaning or authorial statement, but just because many people may not want to does not render the project invalid.
That would be my only concern with much of it’s use – that it is somehow intended to “shut up” people like yourself, who genuinely are interested in taking apart (lovingly) these often amazing new (and old) games.
Thanks for the link-love Fashi, I appreciate that you’re keeping abreast of my work. ;-)
by Ben Abraham on June 24, 2008 at 2:13 am #
Yeah, I see those comments coming from the same IP address. I’m on to you guys. ;-)
Glad you’re enjoying the posts, Fashigady, and Ben, keep plugging away at that thesis!
by Dan Bruno on June 24, 2008 at 1:45 pm #
Abbott’s discussion of the sports simulators is very interesting, but in my view it would continue to make sense and be interesting whether we believed those games were art or not. By a similar token, we can dissect whether and why a particular house is warm and homey without taking any stand on whether architecture and homebuilding are art. However, if we were to take the design and materials of a house to be a commentary on the concept of “homey-ness” then we could not legitimately do so without believing that the architect and builder were creating art. The idea that a particular piece of software is more than just a game is not a prerequisite for an illuminating discussion. It may well be that Halo is art; because this proposition does not admit of proof, the only test of it is to see if using it as a premise leads us anywhere interesting (and I’ll certainly be reading some of the articles linked here so I can find out). My experience is that there are some games where that premise is a dead end, so I view these as “just games”.
While I accept the proposition that there are such games, I agree with the other commenters here that “it’s just a game” is not any kind of argument; it is especially not a rebuttal to intelligent analysis.
by Sparky Clarkson on June 24, 2008 at 10:41 pm #
Firstly I must complement you on your fantastic blog, you write a very pleasing read. I also feel very strongly on this matter. I think that a significant contributor to these rather uninspired opinions is perhaps the overlying influence of pessimism culture towards games. I’ve written some thoughts down on this before. To summarise though, I feel that the reviewing structure of games (with lack of room for critical thought and focus on negatives), dominance of competitve play (and lack of co-operative play) as well as the negative dismissal of subjetivity and fanboy culture all condition us as to how we feel about games within a community context.
Well that is just my overally bloated attempt to justify the situation.
by Daniel Primed on June 26, 2008 at 9:30 am #
Sparky: I think we’re on the same page and disagreeing on semantics. I was trying to sidestep the “are games art?” question, and focus instead on why some people are not interested in discussing games seriously, whatever we consider them to be. Naturally there is a lot of overlap in those discussions, and I could have been clearer about what I was getting at.
Daniel: Thanks for the kind words. Your analysis about negativity in the gaming community resonates with me, and I suspect that part of my disappointment stems from my remove from those things. I avoid most mainstream game reviews, I’m primarily a solo game player, and I don’t subscribe to the fanboy culture. It seems that I haven’t taken in quite as much pessimism as the average gamer.
by Dan Bruno on June 26, 2008 at 10:28 am #
So, I ended up elaborating my view at my site. On the off chance you are interested, you can take a look and call me an idiot.
by Sparky Clarkson on July 1, 2008 at 8:39 am #